Lady Hawk: Out of the Past
by baywinger
Summary: Andy stumbles further into the Moonlight 'verse with an ill-timed visit to Mick after their first introduction. LH:Into the Moonlight She learns more about herself as the past catches up with all of them.
1. Chapter 1

All Moonlight characters and storylines property of WB and SP. No copywrite infringement intended. Author reserves all rights to the below work, Lady Hawk, and original characters.

* * *

**Lady Hawk: Out of the Past**

Andy was folding clothes.

A nice, _normal,_ domestic thing to do while watching T.V. Some mindless game show on, _how I wish the writers strike would be resolved so we could get back some real shows, _Andy reaches down again into the basket without looking. Her fingers touch unfamiliar fabric. She glances down and freezes. In her hand is an old Henley. She turns the shirt over; the bloodstain is completely gone. _Huh. Tide and Shout really do work._ Her thoughts spin back to the day she ended up wearing a _vampire's_ old clothes: Called to help a man desperately injured and threatened, Andy answers only to find that she was sent to save a vampire. Years of helping people out of innumerably impossible desperate situations hadn't prepared her for the possibility that there could be _good _vampires. Vampires that were something more than monsters; ethical, sane, _good_ men.

"Honey, are you done with the clothes yet?" Andy's husband Mark calls from the garage. "I could use the basket for the next load."

"Almost." Andy quickly rolls up the shirt and tosses through the rest of the basket to find the lounge pants and tucks both under a few of her own things. Dumping the rest on top of the pile on the bed, she takes the basket out to Mark. "Here you go."

"Thanks. Are you going to see the ponies tomorrow?" Mark pulls some sheets from the dryer and tosses them into the basket.

"Yeah. I have to toss them a bale and clean, and I'd better turn them out." Andy puts her hand on the doorknob back into the house.

"Your shoulder up to that?" Mark looks over the dryer door at her, "The baby did a number on you."

"Next time Taver dumps me, I'll make sure not to land on a stump. I'm just going to do chores tomorrow, I promise." Andy smiles at Mark and heads back inside. _Oh, and I have to bring a vampire back his clothes I borrowed when mine got soaked in his blood. A two-year-old horse is the _least _lethal thing I fool around with, honey, but he makes a great excuse when I get shot. _Swallowing back the sudden urge to tell him, _anyone,_ about her insane alternative reality, Andy shuts off the now annoying game show and works on finishing folding the remainder of the clothes. Pulling out a pair of worn jeans, a T-shirt and some underthings, she tucks the vampire's clothes beneath the pile and sets the lot out on her bathroom counter.

Mark pads into the hallway carrying the basket of sheets. Andy joins him in making the bed. "You going to head out surfing tomorrow after work?" Andy asks while trying to stuff a reluctant pillow into its case.

"I think so." Mark smiles at Andy struggling with the pillow, "those suckers are hard to tame, huh?"

"You have no idea." Andy grins up at Mark and cuffs him with the pillow. He grabs his and a mild pillow fight ensues. Laughing, they both sit on the bed and try to put their pillows back into their respective cases. Andy looks over at her husband, his face flushed slightly from their game, concentrating on getting the pillow into its over-tight container; _I've been married to him for nine years. I've known him since I was a freshman in college. Why don't I have the guts to tell him what I am_? _Admit it, Hawk, you're afraid. Terrified that he'll see the monster in you, and forget about the girl he married. You'd think that being able to read someone's mind and heart would lead to fewer misunderstandings, but it doesn't. It makes everything so much harder—you can feel his love, really FEEL it, deep inside. And so, you can't bear to lose it. It would shatter your soul. _Suddenly completely out of the mood for fun, Andy tosses the pillow on the bed and pulls up her side of the comforter.

Mark looks up, "Hey little bird, what's wrong?"

"Nothing, hon, I'm just tired, I guess." Andy lies, uncomfortable with Mark's choice of endearment. He'd always called her that, and she squirmed inside from how close to her secret it was. _I'm actually a kind of big bird…_

* * *

The hot torch in his face only a distraction from the searing pain spreading from the silver buckshot in his back and chest, Mick St. John feebly raises his hand in a futile gesture of warding. Suddenly, an unlooked-for reprieve, a shot rings out. Lee Jay jerks, and puts his hand up to his neck, dropping the welder's torch. He crumples to the floor. Mick looks up to see Beth, holding his gun, a guardian angel. Her expression is indecipherable, a mix of shock and fear and something else. Mick slowly sits up, staring at Beth, who lowers his gun. She turns away, in a daze, and fumbles out her cell phone. Mick closes his eyes as she steps out of sight.

Knowing that it would be only minutes before the area would be flooded with police, Mick staggers to his car and falls into the driver's seat. He tries to control the violent shaking of his hands long enough to get the key into the ignition. Like a blessing, the Mercedes finally rumbles to life. As he backs the car, Mick hears sirens in the distance. Feeling his eyes fading and fangs descending from the effects of the poison, Mick turns the car towards the morgue, grateful he had Guierrmo's number on speed dial. _I'm so sorry, Beth. Great way to thank you, abandoning you here, like this. You are such a coward, Mick St. John._

Mick stumbles from the elevator and falls against the wall. He looks down the seemingly endless hallway to his door. By now nearly paralyzed from the silver, he staggers to his door and presses the remote on his keys. The door clicks open and he stumbles against it. In his desperation, he forgets to push it closed. Falling against the sofa table, Mick fumbles the cap from a bag of blood and begins to feed. The relief was indescribable as the cool liquid begins to put out the fire of the poison in his back and shoulder.

"Mick?" Beth's voice shoots through Mick's heart, freezing him with panic. "You ran off again, one second you were there, and then you were…gone. A-are you okay?"

Knowing it was useless, Mick chokes, "Please leave," as he hides his face against his chest.

"Not without answers," Beth steps into the apartment, circling around the pillar as Mick struggles to breathe, his heart rabbiting faster than it has in fifty years.

As she moves into sight, Mick dives away from her, turning his face to try to hide. He shudders in pain and despair, the bag of blood clutched in his fist forgotten. "I keep dreaming about you. Why?" Beth steps back around the pillar.

Mick pleads, "Please don't look at me." Gasping from both the poison and the inevitability of Beth finding out his secret, Mick keeps his face turned away from her.

"Oh my God." He can hear the shock in her voice.

Mick feels his soul crumble. He turns his head to look up at Beth.

She puts her hand to her mouth, eyes wide with horror, "What are you?"

Completely defeated, Mick admits, "I'm a vampire."

* * *

Beep…beep…bee-click. Mumbling under her breath about the indecency of getting up before dawn just to go shovel horse poop, Andy rolls out of bed without waking anyone but the dog, who simply moves to take advantage of the free pillow space now available. _I swear, I'm gonna sell you all, _Andy thinks. The whippet gives her a reproachful look over his shoulder before tucking his nose back under the covers. _Sorry. _ He doesn't even acknowledge the apology, instead just snuggling a little closer to Mark. Andy shakes her head, and heads to the bathroom to take care of necessities and get dressed.

She gulps down some coffee, debating with herself. Horses or vampire first? _Mick will probably be up for a little while longer but I'd hate to wake him if I waited. _Decided, she puts down her mug and picks up his clothes. Mark would be safely asleep for at least another forty-five minutes, so she quietly steps outside. The barest hint of dawn is coloring the sky to the east, but the birds aren't awake yet. She shifts and pictures Mick's hallway in her head as clearly as if she were landing there already. She lifts her wings and jumps into the darkness of the place between where she was and where she's going.

Andy lands in Mick's hallway. His door hangs open and she hears a woman's voice, "Oh my God." Still clutching Mick's shirt and pants to her chest, Andy slips up the hallway as quietly as she can. She nears his door, puts her shoulder to the wall, and slowly peers around the threshold. As the apartment comes into view, Andy sees a petite blonde woman standing frozen, with her hand to her mouth. Her eyes looked terrified. "What are you?"

Out of view, Mick's voice sounds harsh, ragged. "I'm a vampire."

Andy pulls back into the hallway, her back to the wall and mind racing. _Oh Mick…no. What could have happened?_ Andy stands there a moment, unsure of the best course of action. _He's a friend, damn it. He sounds awful. At least if I go in there, it may blunt the shock of "vampire" with the shock of "wings". _Andy takes a deep breath and a step away from the wall. She squares her shoulders and walks resolutely into view. Mick turns sharply towards her, his expression heart-wrenchingly pitiful. He is sitting with his back to a support pillar, his face and hands bloody and he was sweaty and shaking. Andy tosses the clothes to the floor and runs to his side. She spreads her wings a little, her back to the blonde woman, shielding Mick from view and kneels next to him.

Touching his shoulder gently, Andy breathes, "God, Mick. What happened?"

Mick closes his eyes and whispers, "Silver."

Andy winces, "Shit." She looks over her shoulder at the blonde and back to Mick, "Who's that?"

Mick stifles a sob and chokes, "Beth. She…was…a friend." Mick looks up at Andy with tears in his eyes.

Andy bites her lip, voice muffled with sympathy, "I'm sorry."

Mick turns away and closes his eyes. Andy watches him for a few seconds but he won't look back up. She turns a little, keeping her wings out to hide Mick, towards the blonde woman who stands, eyes wide, both hands over her mouth, trembling slightly from head to foot.

Their eyes meet, and Andy spreads her hands, palms up, gesturing peace. "Neither of us is going to hurt you."

Beth just stares, continuing to shake.

"Mick's hurt, and I need to help him, okay?" Andy can't tell if the woman even hears her, "Beth?"

Beth jerks and blinks, then turns and stumbles out of the apartment, sobbing. Andy watches her go, then turns back to Mick. He is staring after Beth, looking as if she had taken his heart with her as she ran out.

"Mick?"

He looks up at her, eyes empty.

"You should finish that." Andy takes Mick's wrist and puts the opened bag of blood back in his hand. He looks down at it and back up to her. His face crumples.

"Mick, shh…I'm so sorry." Andy puts her arms around his shoulders and pulls the unresisting vampire close. As he sobs into her shoulder, her eyes fill with tears. "I know, its okay," she murmurs and touches the back of his head, gently. He quiets after a few moments and lifts his head. Andy releases him and he sits up. He awkwardly rubs his nose with his knuckle and glances up at her briefly and looks away. Andy half-smiles at him and shakes her head, "Eat, silly. There's nothing to be embarrassed about."

She stands and pointedly turns her back to him and walks to the door. She looks out, down the hallway. Beth is nowhere to be seen. She closes Mick's door, and leans her forehead against it. "What do you think she'll do?"

Mick stops drinking and swallows, "I don't know."

Andy turns and puts her back to the door. "And here I was just going to stop by to give you back your clothes. What happened?"


	2. Chapter 2

Nearly blind with tears, Beth half runs, half stumbles up the hallway and pounds the down button on the elevator furiously. "C'mon, c'mon, hurry." She hears gears hiss, and looks back over her shoulder towards Mick's apartment. Nothing was happening; the door hadn't even closed. The elevator dings and the doors open under her hand. She darts inside and punches the garage floor button and the doors closed button simultaneously. As the doors finally slide shut, she leans against the wall shaking with relief at her escape. _I can't have just seen that, I can't. What WAS that? He didn't say that he was a vampire, there's no such thing as vampires. And what was the other one, the woman with the frigging wings! Wings? Vampires? I've got to be completely mad. This whole night didn't happen, I'm dreaming, having a nightmare. I have to be._

The elevator dings to a stop and Beth jumps, startled out of the jumble of thoughts chasing around her head. She pulls her keys to the Prius out of her pocket and walks quickly to her car. Hands still shaking, she can barely unlock it with the remote. _It's not real, none of it. It can't be. _She opens the door and chokes back a sob. Mick's gun is sitting on the passenger seat in mute testament to the events of the past twenty-four hours. _Oh my God. _Beth closes her eyes and tears run down her cheeks. _Mick? But he saved me…saved Julia. He can't be a vampire. There's no such thing as vampires. Is there? _Is _there?_

She jams the key into the ignition and the electric motor silently comes to life. Beth shifts the car into gear and then pounds the accelerator so hard the second engine coughs and struggles to ignite. She drives almost blindly towards her apartment, then changes her mind and cuts across three lanes of traffic to head to BuzzWire. It was just after sunrise on Saturday, there shouldn't be anyone there. Everyone tended to work from home until afternoon most weekends and she needed the high-speed server. She had research to do.

* * *

"Mick," Hawk had slid down against the door to sit as Mick recited the events of the past few days, "I can't believe your sorry run of luck. It's almost as if something wanted Beth to find out."

"I _know!_" Mick's voice cracks. The blood is helping offset the effects of the silver's poison but he still felt feverish. He glances towards Hawk, who is slumped into an untidy pile of silvery-grey feathers with her head on her knees.

Hawk looks up at the harshness of his voice, "You've got to get that silver out of you. I can help, if you want."

"Actually, you'd better leave." Mick bites his lip. "I called a friend from the car earlier. He's probably almost here. I don't know how he'd react if he saw you." _Well, I guess I do. And it wouldn't be pretty. _

"Oh. Another vampire?" Hawk pushes herself up from the door and stands. She fluffs the feathers out on her wings and shakes them back into order.

Mick stares at her, mouth drooping open slightly. "I'm sorry. That's just so…"

"Weird? Creepy? Freakish? I know, believe me. I've been living with it for the last eighteen years and I still can't get used to the idea." Hawk bends over to retrieve Mick's shirt and pants she'd dropped earlier and walks over to toss them on the sofa.

"I was thinking more along the lines of _impossible._" Mick offers her a very slight smile. "I think it would be cool to be able to fly."

Hawk gives him a measured look. "It is. Cool to be able to fly. But as far as impossible goes, you don't know the half of it."

"I bet." Mick returns Hawk's gaze, thinking. "Can you find Beth? Maybe…follow her, make sure she's okay? Like how you knew I needed help, before? She was so scared."

Hawk raises her eyebrows at him. "I can't control those visions. I'm not entirely sure why I get called to some people and not the thousands of others that need help every day."

"Oh." Mick sighs, feeling sick with worry. _If she completely loses it and tells someone…Josef will kill her himself. Or try to make me do it. Even if she keeps quiet I worry that she might crash her car or something…she was so freaked out. So scared._

"Maybe there's something I can do." Hawk takes a deep breath. "What does her car look like, and where _exactly_ might she go?

* * *

"Mick, buddy, the scrapes you get yourself into are legend." Josef pulls units of blood from the refrigerator in his office and unceremoniously stuffs them back into Mick's leather bag. He looks at several crystal bottles also chilling in the sleek stainless appliance and purses his lips. "I guess I can bring along a bit of my own stock. It won't hurt to be generous." Much more carefully, he slips two bottles into the leather case, arranging Mick's bags of _retail _blood between them as a cushion.

As he waits for the top of his convertible to raise and click into place, he pouts at his watch. "I should be going to my freezer, now. Why _do_ all the emergencies have to happen in the morning?

Josef pulls into the parking structure below Mick's apartment. As he makes the turn, a silver Prius squeals past, nearly hitting him. "Watch it, lunatic!" He yells at his rearview, and shakes his head. He watches as the little car peals out with complete disregard to traffic and accelerates away. "Idiots. Think of how much blood they are going to waste when they squish themselves out on the street."

He parks and approaches the elevator, pushing the button for the penthouse. He sighs again, feeling a little bored and wishing he was back at home settling into his freezer for the day. _Rather than heading up to cut a bunch of silver out of my idiot friend. At least he managed to prove his innocence and kill that psycho without exposing us all. That damned idealistic streak of his is going to be the death of me._

* * *

"You can _what?_" Mick stares at Andy with complete disbelief writ large across his face. He pulls back a little from her, and Andy sighs.

She eyes Mick, the irony of his reaction making her shake her head. "I believe we covered this already."

"But…" Mick blinks, takes a breath, blinks again. "That's…"

"Impossible?" Andy looks down at him, one eyebrow raised.

"No. Weird, creepy, and freakish!" Mick grins up at her, beginning to recover.

"Yeah." Andy smiles back, "But useful."

"I'd say." Mick cocks his head, listening. "Wait. I think I hear the elevator. You've got to go. _Now!_"

"Okay." Andy turns towards the door.

"No. Not that way. Do that disappearing thing." Mick sits forward urgently. "I don't want to have to explain you to Josef right now. He won't take it well."

"I won't take what well?" Josef pushes the door open and steps gracefully into the apartment.


	3. Chapter 3

The carafe chatters against her coffee mug, _Maybe I shouldn't have any right now. _Beth takes a swallow of the hot bitter liquid anyway and makes her way back to her desk. She's been looking at image after image of vampires, websites filled with questionable information, video clips that were obviously fake, and felt like she was less certain about the veracity of their existence than before she started. _If vampires are real, they are doing a very good job of hiding. Damn Hollywood, three-fourths of what I've found seems to have come from film-writers imaginations. Most of it doesn't go back farther than the thirties._

She sits back down in her chair and stares at the monitor without seeing it. She takes another sip of coffee. _Wait. Maybe I'm going at this all wrong. There's too much information on vampires to sort it all out, but what about the other one? The woman with wings? What about her? What does she have to do with vampires? What is she?_

Beth begins to type furiously.

* * *

"Well?" Josef turns to close Mick's door.

Mick looks around frantically, and then closes his eyes and lets out a breath in relief. "Nothing, Josef."

"Don't _nothing _me. Who were you talking to?" Josef scans the room, his brow starting to furrow.

"Do you see anybody? Josef, please." Mick fakes a smile, "I wasn't talking to anyone."

"You have two doors to this place." Josef glares at Mick. "And you lie very badly."

"Can we talk about this later? The silver is starting to burn again." Mick tries to redirect the four-hundred-year-old, knowing that it was probably useless. Josef didn't survive this long by being gullible.

Josef stares at Mick, mouth set in a frown. "Fine. Here." He drops the leather bag in Mick's lap. "Where's your stuff?"

"Over in that cupboard." Mick points awkwardly over his right shoulder, and Josef paces towards the cabinet.

Josef returns carrying a surgical supply box and two chairs from the dining room. He places the chairs next to Mick and sets the box on the sofa table. He bends over and takes the case of blood from Mick and walks into the kitchen. He carefully sets the two crystal bottles in the hidden fridge and stuffs the bags onto the bottom shelf. He drops the case onto the counter, turns and reaches under the sink and pulls out a large glass jar. He stalks back to Mick, sets the jar on the table next to the surgical kit and looks down at him for a moment before sighing, "Come on, get up." He pulls Mick up, somewhat roughly, and guides him into the chair. "That coat is completely ruined."

Mick looks down at his jacket, "Yeah."

"Here, let me get it off." Josef pulls the bloody duster off with surprising gentleness, taking care not to move Mick's arm more than he has to. "So. Seems like you pulled off a miracle. How did you get out of this one?"

Mick eyes Josef, slightly suspicious, but answers honestly, "Beth shot him."

Josef's eyes flick up to meet Mick's, "Really?" He pulls Mick's Henley up and over his head. Mick hisses slightly from the movement and looks down at his chest. It's mottled with nasty black and greenish bruises with angry red lines radiating from the cluster of pellets.

"Ouch." Mick looks up at Josef, trying to lighten the mood a little.

Josef just looks at him and reaches for a pair of surgical gloves. "It looks like I'm going to be here a while. Maybe a good story would pass the time."

"What?" Mick asks, confused.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe a tale of: _W__ho were you talking to_ _when I walked in_?" Josef picks up a scalpel and poises it over the first pellet hole.

* * *

_This is crazy, but could just possibly be what I'm looking for…_Beth scribbles down the URL for an old newspaper article and hits _PRINT_.

She'd found three possibly related articles so far: The last one, which was actually the oldest, was from a little Colorado town paper that ran a story seventeen years ago about an avalanche victim, a six year old girl, that had inexplicably been found at a ranger station nine miles from where her family had been vacationing. The story reported that the girl's mom had been sitting on the porch of the little cabin watching her daughter make snow angels when she'd heard a loud rumble and a wall of snow and debris hit the cabin and her daughter disappeared under it. It continued:

_Hours later, rescue teams managed to get to the distraught family by helicopter but there was no sign of the little girl. They brought in dogs, but nothing. The next morning, the first shift called in from the park ranger station; there was a girl fitting the description at the station, claiming to have been brought there by a teenager that first looked like a big hawk, then an angel. Efforts have been made to find out how she was actually rescued but the only thing found so far were two sets of footprints leading to the door of the station. The tracks end a few feet from the door and there are no vehicular or other tracks in evidence at this time. The girl has evidence of massive injuries—bruising, recently healed cuts and bones. Doctors have run every possible test, and the results show that the pattern of injuries were consistent with massive blunt-force trauma and should have been fatal. One surgeon reports, "There is no way that these injuries could have been caused in any way other than getting caught in the avalanche. But there is also no way that she could have survived these injuries, nor could any of them have healed in a matter of twenty hours. This girl suffered from seven shattered ribs, a punctured lung, a broken femur, and other internal injuries. But she's happy, talking, and appears to be no more than two weeks from complete recovery. The only evidence of the trauma she endured is that she insists that she was rescued by what she calls, "Lady Hawk," and will not be deterred from her fantasy. Other than that obviously childish coping strategy, we feel she is completely normal and will be fine. There is simply no way to explain her amazing survival."_

Beth shakes her head after re-reading the article she'd just printed and looks at the other two. They were similar, unexplained survival, a report of a woman with wings.

From the Plain Dealer, a Cleveland paper, dated ten years ago: _It has been reported that the victim claimed she had been attacked by a gang while walking home from her bus stop after getting off from work, but a large pale dog or wolf drove them off before turning into a woman with wings and healing her from a gunshot wound. Authorities have no explanation as the victim's clothes were soaked in blood matching her own blood type and there was evidence of a recently healed wound that could have been caused by a bullet. The victim has been released from the hospital and psychiatric evaluations and further tests, including DNA matching, are pending._

From the New York Times, dated September 14, 2001: _We have heard reports that over twenty people have claimed to have been pulled from the burning second tower of the World Trade Center by an angel. While this explanation is obviously some form of collective post-traumatic stress, we have been able to confirm that all of the victims reporting similar stories were in fact in the building at the time of the attack and that their offices were above the floors that are estimated to have been hit by the plane when it crashed into the building. Experts feel that it is extremely unlikely that there were passable exits from the floors above the crash site and so are still investigating these particular parties' escape._

_My God._ Beth just stares at the three articles on her desk.

"Beth! Whatcha doing here, honey?" Beth jumps and shrieks, grabbing at her coffee mug and saving it from drowning her keyboard and research. She quickly flips the file folder shut and turns towards her editor.

"Mo. My goodness. You scared me!" Beth exits the screen before turning towards her editor.

"Honestly, Beth, I wish I had ten of you. You should be at home, cuddling up to that handsome D.A. of yours, letting him comfort you from your terrible night." Mo smiles down at the young reporter, "Unless you happen to be writing me a full report with all the juicy details?"

"I am doing research for a story, Mo. But I don't think I'm quite ready to report on last night. I…I couldn't sleep so I came to work. It's pretty overwhelming right now." Beth offers her boss a shaky smile.

"Oh, kiddo, it's okay. I know you'll get me something great as soon as you can. It's amazing how that all came out, though. Didn't your P.I. friend say that Lee Jay was guilty _and_ dangerous from the very beginning?" Mo turns away from Beth to pour herself a cup of coffee.

"Yeah…he did." _And now that I'm thinking about it, I'm sure that he knew that first hand. That it was most definitely NOT his father that was hired to protect that woman twenty-five years ago…_

"Maybe you can do another interview with him? Whatcha think?" Mo interrupts Beth's thought. "Well?"

"Um, yeah. Sure. I'll ask him as soon as I see him again." Beth feels her chest go tight. _Am I ever going to see him again? Do I want to? Dare to?_ She feels almost dizzy with conflicting thoughts and feelings. Mick had saved her last week, had been so gentle and protective. He warned her about Lee Jay, freed Julia, and seemed so vulnerable lying there when that monster was torturing him. _What am I supposed to believe? _

"Well, be sure to see him soon then." Mo announces briskly. "Since you're here now, though, how about a distraction from your recent troubles?"


	4. Chapter 4

Andy landed badly.

_Son of a…Ouch!_ Picking herself up from the concrete floor of the parking garage, she looks around; glad that yet again, Mick's building appeared to have a ridiculous lack of traffic.

She brushes her scratched palms on her jeans and sighs. She had not been ready to teleport out of there and had gone with the first location that she could picture clearly enough she wouldn't get lost in the dark and trapped. _You almost didn't make it, idiot. I can't believe you jumped between like that. Worst case would have just been that you'd have had to calm another vampire down. Right? _But Mick had been pretty alarmed about the idea of his friend Josef seeing her. She could still feel his panic vibrating in her chest. _Why can't you stay out of that man's head?_

_Ok. Breathe. You are Andy. Remember that. Andy._ She shifts, this time wholly into the hawk. She jumps from the floor of the now cave-dark garage and flies towards a bright spot, the exit. With a strong beat of her wings and a sharp twist of her long tail, she rakes up and lands on a light pole just outside the garage.

The bright sky beckons above the dim canyon of buildings, but she clings to her perch, desperate to control the instincts of her very alien body. _You are Andy. Not a goshawk. Andy._ It's hard to think in words, her thoughts come as pictures with just an echo of her voice behind them. _Beth. Silver Prius. _ She takes off, the quick beat-beat-glide rhythm of her wings quickly taking her above the dim shadows of the buildings. She sees a change in the air just to her right and with a tiny shift of her weight, she moves into an updraft caused by the early morning sun warming the east face of the building below. Effortlessly she's lifted a few hundred feet and the exhilaration of the air flowing around her almost allows the hawk to take control.

The flash of sun on something silver down on the dim street catches Andy's eye and mind. With extreme effort she focuses on the car below, pushing the hawk down into the back of her consciousness. _Don't lose it, Andy. You know how dangerous this is. _ The car swerves recklessly, and Andy slips out of the rising air to follow. She can see the license plate easily; it's the number Mick told her. She allows herself to lose a little altitude and follows Beth. _Its good Mick sent me after her…she's going to squish herself on the road right here if she keeps driving like this…_

* * *

"Josef, please. Not n-ouch!" Mick yelps.

"Hold still." Josef probes for the pellet with the hemostats. Successful, he pulls it out and drops it into the glass jar half filled with bullets and assorted shrapnel. "I don't know why you keep this souvenir jar. It's rather macabre."

Mick looks at Josef and blinks. "What else am I going to do with it? You can't just throw away all that lead; it's bad for the environment. What with the living forever, I'd think you'd care about taking care of the earth."

"You aren't going to distract me. Who were you talking to?" Josef begins fishing for another pellet.

"Josef. You wouldn't understand. Can't you let it go?" Mick grinds his teeth as Josef cuts another bit of silver free and drops it into the jar.

"Try me." Josef eyes flick up to Mick's briefly and back to the wound. "You know I don't let _anything_ go."

"Josef…"

"Mick. Now. I'm losing patience." Josef's normally smooth voice contains a hint of frost, but he continues working on Mick's shoulder.

Mick closes his eyes. _I don't think I get to keep any of my secrets today._ He looks at Josef. "Okay. But please put down the scalpel for a minute."

Josef looks up at Mick for a moment. "This sounds interesting." He drops the scalpel and hemostats onto the table and stands. "I think I may need refreshments for this."

"_Josef._" Exasperated, Mick looks up at his friend.

"Fine." Josef sits and folds his arms across his chest.

* * *

Slipping from updraft to updraft caused by the buildings of Los Angeles warming in the rising sun, Andy follows Beth across the city. She stays high, the hawk's vision easily tracking the little Prius. Using the goshawk's body without disappearing into its instincts was like walking a tightrope over an abyss. Despite the exhilaration of freely flying without the risk of discovery, she hated shifting into this form, but it was really the only option for following Beth. Mick's car was entirely too recognizable, and she couldn't just teleport somewhere she hadn't been before unless she was called with a vision.

The car below slows, and Andy allows herself to stall a bit. The change in airspeed flowing across the top of her wings lifts small feathers, which act as a brake and she loses altitude quickly. Beth turns into the parking lot of a somewhat isolated building, and Andy drops down to land on a light post at the corner of the lot. Andy watches Beth get out of her car and almost run to the entrance of the building. She unlocks the door and looks over her shoulder, wiping tears from her face with the heel of her hand. She steps inside the building and out of sight.

_Poor thing._ Andy drops off the light and glides down to perch on the railing near the entrance. She bobs her head, trying to see through the window. She makes out Beth pushing the button for the elevator. _Okay, going up._ Andy jumps from the railing and with a few wing-beats lands at the very top of a small shade tree bordering the walkway into the building. The branches bend under her and she spreads her wings for balance. Andy stretches her neck to try to see into the second floor, she's rewarded with a view of Beth stepping out of the elevator. She walks towards Andy and turns left and out of sight again. _And what are you up to?_ Andy flies to a streetlight along the road that's even with the next window on the second floor. She now has a view of the neon sign on the building; concentrating, Andy forces the hawk's mind to see the lines as symbols, then words: BuzzWire. _Crap. This may be very, very bad._

* * *

"Josef. Remember a few years back, the news story about 9/11?" Mick tries to ease Josef into the information.

"I don't really need background, Mick. Spit it out." Josef sighs sharply and crosses his legs.

"Fine. I was talking with _Lady Hawk_ when you came in." Mick says it in a rush and watches Josef out of the corner of his eye.

Josef closes his eyes for a long moment.

When he opens them again, Mick is surprised that they are still brown. He takes a breath in relief. _Maybe this isn't going to go that badly after all._

"Try again, buddy." Josef uncrosses his legs and stands. "I am definitely getting something to drink now."

"But, it's the truth. That's who I was talking to. Lady Hawk." Mick cranes his head around to look at Josef, mystified.

"No. You weren't." Josef calmly pulls two glasses off Mick's shelf and places them on the counter.

"I don't think I understand." Mick continues to stare at the older vamp, forehead furrowed.

"You are still alive. Or undead, whatever." Josef slides the door to the fridge open and pulls out one of the crystal bottles. "Therefore, you were not in the same room with Lady Hawk."

"But…"Mick shakes his head; unable to make sense of Josef's reaction.

Josef pours the blood into both glasses, and returns the carafe carefully to the refrigerator. He walks back to Mick and hands him a glass. "Tell me something I can believe. Perhaps that your reporter friend walked in on you or…" Josef stops.

Mick looks away and takes a quick swallow from his glass.

"She did. Didn't she? Good Lord, Mick, what is wrong with you?" Josef stands up and stares down at Mick. He sets his glass on the table with trembling hands. "Where did she go?"

"Josef, stop it. I didn't say that Beth was here. She wasn't. It was just Lady Hawk." Mick tries desperately to lie, but Josef was right, he sucked at it.

Josef freezes, glaring at Mick for a long moment, his expression changing slowly to one of incredulous disbelief. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"I am. Completely serious." Mick looks up at the elder vampire a little fearfully.

"Do you have any idea how dangerous that creature is?" Josef begins pacing in front of Mick.

"Which one?" Mick regrets his attempt at humor immediately.

"Cute. While I am no fan of your freshie reporter friend, I'm talking about Lady Hawk." Josef continues to pace restlessly.

"Only what you told me that day when I joked about the '_angel rescues'_ and you half took off my head." Mick follows Josef with his eyes. "You never did say why you were so freaked out by that news story…I remember you said that you were sure they weren't real. That Lady Hawk wasn't real, in fact. I think your exact words were: _We'd better hope that she isn't real. The only time those things appear is when the world is about to end._"

"Well, maybe I was exaggerating about the world ending, but they do only seem to come around when it seems that it's pretty stirred up." Josef stops pacing briefly to look at Mick.

"They? What are '_they', _Josef?" Mick asks, frowning.

"I've seen _things_ like Lady Hawk before. Twice, in fact. _They_ are hunters, _they_ call themselves 'Guardians', and as far as I've been able to tell _they_ target…" Josef licks his lips and looks away.

"What, Josef?" Mick reaches out and grabs Josef's sleeve.

"Demons, Mick. All right?" Josef pulls away and turns his back to Mick.

"Are you showing your age here, Josef? Demons?" Mick almost laughs.

"Believe what you want." Josef snaps.

"So why do you think she's dangerous to _us_? I mean I know you said before that she would hunt us but that's not true. At least, she's been pretty calm about me." Mick shifts his injured shoulder, the silver beginning to bother him again.

"She's _been_ pretty calm, has she? How and _when_ exactly did you happen to meet?" Josef's voice has gone unpleasantly smooth.

Mick swallows. "Ah…it was almost a week ago, now. I got into a tight spot working that kidnapping case. She came out of nowhere. She saved my life, Josef. I'm not kidding."

"A week ago." Josef picks up his glass and drains it. "And when were you going to mention this little…adventure?"

"I…I didn't think it was that important." Mick curses himself silently, _Got anything better than that? Slick, St. John._

"Right." Josef moves towards him and sits back down in his chair. He picks up the scalpel and hemostats and eyes Mick, "How about you tell me about that _insignificant_ little incident while I finish this?"


	5. Chapter 5

"Hey Mo, Beth!" Steve waves as he saunters into the BuzzWire office. The afternoon rush is almost over; most of the staff had already gone off to cover evening stories. Beth had decided to stay when Mo gave her the police reports for several murder victims to work on. She welcomed the story, but was definitely beginning to fade and was debating heading to her apartment.

"Nice of you to join us." Mo looks at her watch and back up to the cameraman.

"What?" Steve spreads his hands. "I never come in before noon on Saturday."

"It's three twenty-two, Steve." Beth has to smile even though she was pretty tired; Steve had his own special charm. And he was good at what he did.

"I hope you're late because you got some amazing footage from the accident on the 5 interstate." Mo folds her arms and raises her eyebrows at Steve.

"Um, no. There was an accident?" Steve looks back and forth between Mo and Beth.

"Steve." Mo frowns.

"I…did get something for you. Not as exciting as accident footage but still pretty cool." Steve holds up his digital camera.

"Good. Let's see." Mo walks towards Steve, beckoning Beth to follow.

"It's from right outside our building. Here." Steve turns the camera towards the two women to show them the review screen on the back.

"What am I looking at?" Mo squints at the little screen. Beth cranes her neck to try to see as well.

"It's a goshawk. There." Steve advances a few frames. A clear shot of the bird appears.

"So what's the big deal?" Beth asks the cameraman, frowning.

"Just that goshawks aren't from around here." Steve shrugs. "That's actually a bit of an understatement. They're from, like, Alaska. This bird really shouldn't be here, but it's sitting right outside, calm as can be."

"Outside?" Beth cocks her head, thinking furiously, "Now?"

"Yep. Just outside that window, if I'm not mistaken." Steve points behind Beth towards the window by the coffeemaker.

Mo turns and pulls the blinds up. All three look out. "See. Right there." Steve points again. On the light post a few feet away, the bird swivels its head towards them. It's quite large, somewhat larger than the common Red Tailed hawks of the area. Pale silvery-grey in color on it's back; its chest is nearly white traced with fine hatch marks of silver. Its eyes are blue-grey, a few shades darker than its back and almost white streaks run above them on its brow, fading into the gunmetal of the top of its head. It eyes the people in the window with clear interest.

"It's pretty." Mo smiles over her shoulder at Steve.

"Yeah." Steve nods. "I wonder where it's from. It's lighter than the hawks I used to see when I was a kid, when we stayed at my grandpa's cabin in Canada. Its eyes are the wrong color, too."

"Really?" Beth looks at Steve, interested despite herself.

"Well, it's definitely an adult; the babies are brown and spotty. But the adults usually have bright red eyes. Makes 'em look kind of insane, really. They're normally really twitchy, too. This one is too calm."

"Oh my God." Beth puts her hand to her mouth and steps back from the window, a suspicion exploding in her head.

"What, honey?" Mo looks over her shoulder from the window.

"Nothing. I just…I should get started on the legwork for that story you wanted me to look into. I can probably get into the morgue tonight if I can get a hold of my contact." Beth talks over her shoulder as she gathers up her purse and the manila folder on her desk.

Steve drops the blinds back over the window. "Want me to come?"

"You can't film at the morgue; we'd both get kicked out." Beth pulls her keys from her pocket and smiles shakily at him.

"Okay, honey. Don't forget about getting an interview with your P.I. buddy, too. One cannot live on morgue shots alone." Mo waves Beth on her way. "Now, Steve. How are you going to make pictures of a bird into a story, my man?"

Beth leaves the office and walks briskly to the elevator down the hallway. As she rides down she flips through her folder and skims through the article from the avalanche. She stops at: _first looked like a big hawk._ Her hands tremble and she bites her lip, thinking.

She steps outside and looks around, and up. She walks around the building and spots the bird. It definitely looks down at her, and she takes a breath. She whispers, "I know what you are."

The bird watches her for a moment, then takes off over her head and around the corner of the building back towards the parking lot. _Huh. I guess not._ Smiling at herself, feeling a bit foolish, Beth turns and walks towards her car.

As she rounds the corner, a female voice says, "You're pretty sharp."

Beth jumps; dropping everything in her hands, and looks around frantically. The woman from Mick's apartment steps out from behind the shade tree at the entrance of the building, her hands up.

"Get away from me. I'll call the cops." Beth reaches into her pocket for her phone.

"Easy. I'm not here to hurt you. Mick just wanted me to make sure that you were okay after he scared you this morning." The woman says this quietly, spreading her hands out wider but not coming any closer to Beth.

"_Mick?" _Beth's eyes widen with panic.

"Okay." The woman bites her lip. "Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned him yet. You're still a little freaked out."

"A little freaked out?" Beth hisses. "Are you kidding? You heard what he said. Wouldn't _you_ be a _little freaked out_?"

"I think you're asking the wrong person." The woman smiles at her. "I don't get 'freaked' about much anymore."

Beth stares at the woman for a long moment. Her manner made it hard to stay panicked, and Beth felt herself feeling a bit more centered than she had since last night, _before Lee Jay, and before Mick_. "Are you Lady Hawk?" Beth asks.

"Yeah." The woman's eyes narrow a little and she smiles. "I'm impressed you figured that out. I've been pretty careful over the years. There isn't much out there to find about me."

Beth bends over and picks up her purse and file. "I found three articles."

"And those would be the ones." Lady Hawk nods with a chuckle, "You're good."

Beth looks up, "Thanks."

Lady Hawk nods again and smiles. "Think you're going to be okay now?"

"What do you mean?" Beth stands and frowns at Lady Hawk, puzzled.

"I mean, do you think you still need an escort?" She cocks her head slightly, lifting an eyebrow at Beth, "Done driving like a lunatic?"

Beth blushes, "You followed me? How?"

Lady Hawk raises her other eyebrow and points up.

"You _were_ that bird!" Beth's jaw drops in astonishment.

"I'm glad I gave that guy a thrill. Too bad he blew it for me." Lady Hawk shrugs, "There's always got to be one bird watcher."

Beth blinks slowly and shakes her head. "Pretty soon, I've got to wake up."

Lady Hawk looks sympathetically at her, "Honey, it's been eighteen years since I started this dream…nightmare…whatever. You don't wake up from this one."

Beth takes a breath and lets it out quickly, and nods. "I need to get going. I've got work to do. A story."

Lady Hawk eyes her warily.

"Not _that _one. Just a murder case." Beth smiles. "I can hold a story when I have to."

Lady Hawk nods a little, and smiles. "Thanks."

She blurs; Beth rubs her eyes, and her vision clears. The pale silver-grey hawk stands where the woman had just been. Beth's eyes widen as it unfolds its wings and launches itself to the sky. It circles briefly overhead, then disappears.

Beth stares upwards, mouth open in wonder. She shakes her head and turns back towards her car. She pulls her phone from her pocket and dials the morgue. "Hi, it's Beth. When can I come down?"


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

  


I finally figured out that this is where I can thank you guys for the reviews...I'm kinda simple...

* * *

"Say something, Josef." Mick fidgets, just a little. Josef had listened silently throughout the morning and into the afternoon. He'd finished digging the silver out more than an hour ago, and Mick had finished talking before that. Josef had merely set the tools down, poured them both another glass of blood, handed one to Mick, and turned to stare at the fire. He was still standing there, glass untouched. Mick had even gotten up off the hard chair and sat on the couch twenty minutes ago, and Josef hadn't twitched.

Josef takes a deep breath, looks at his cup, and then downs the whole thing. He turns towards Mick but looks past him and stalks to the kitchen. Mick watches him pass. Josef pulls the bottle of scotch out and nearly fills his glass. He takes a long swallow and finally looks at Mick.

"You are either supremely lucky or about to find yourself in so deep a chasm of hell you'll never claw your way out." Josef takes another swallow of rose-tinged scotch.

Mick blinks at Josef. "You'll have to elaborate there a little, Josef."

Josef glares at him. He lifts his cup for another mouthful without breaking eye contact.

Mick tries to match him for a moment, but has to look away from the intensity of the older vamp's glare.

"I know you probably thought I was joking when I've referred to being chased by a torch-bearing mob." Josef finally sits, opposite Mick.

"I really never thought about it. I take it that you weren't using hyperbole, then." Mick raises an eyebrow.

"No." Josef looks up from his glass and his gaze sharpens. "Do you know what was leading that mob, Mick? Can you take a guess?"

Mick inhales sharply. "A guardian?"

"Give the man a prize." Josef sets his glass on the side table next to his chair. "Back then, news traveled slowly, but people believed in vampires and…other things. Because of this, oddly, it seemed safer for vampires to live somewhat closer together. Not _nests_, no. But we stayed close to share information…and…well. If it seemed that people were getting restless, we'd move on. We had ways to communicate where the group was going and we'd relocate. Usually in twos and threes or so until everyone had been accounted for." He trails off.

Mick waits a few seconds and clears his throat.

Josef starts slightly and glances at Mick. "Well, during one of those moves we lost contact with a few friends. We waited for weeks, but they never arrived. One day, mid-morning, I was awakened by screams and the smell of smoke. I ran out to see what was happening, along with my…friend…that was sharing the small house with me. As soon as we opened the door a man swung a scythe at our heads. I was lucky; it merely gashed me across the chest but Annaliese…" He clenches his jaw and takes a breath. "She was shorter than me…"

Josef empties his glass. Mick stands and moves into the kitchen and brings what's left of the scotch to him. Josef looks up, eyes hard at first but then he relents. "Thanks."

"I don't…" Mick sits back down, gingerly.

"I slammed the door shut and barred it. But it was too late." Josef continues, interrupting. "She was gone. I was also quite thoroughly trapped. Back then thatch was quite common. When the smoke got too thick I had to try to escape. I opened the door and two arrows narrowly missed me. I ducked and ran as hard as I could. It was chaos, smoke everywhere, screaming, blood."

Josef smiles, without any humor at all. "Much of the blood wasn't even ours. Once the mob started, they didn't even try to figure out who were vampires and who were simply in the wrong place. It was hell."

Mick waits silently, unwilling to take a breath, shocked by what and how much his friend was revealing. _Josef…what have you seen?_

"I'd almost made it out of the village when an arrow caught me in the back. I don't know if it was luck or skill on the marksman's part, but the bastard nailed me right through the heart. The next thing I felt was a heavy boot rolling me over, snapping the arrow and pushing it further through my chest. The sun was shining right into my eyes until _he_ spread his wings and blocked it out." Josef's jaw clenches, and Mick can see just a little bit of fang.

"That _thing_ asks me, 'Do you know what I am, monster?' and kicks me. I remember feeling ribs crack…He went on…about his _God_, his mission to rid the world of _things_ like me. How he'd been given a gift by the forest to be able to take on the forms of the greatest predators to be able to hunt the _evil_ things walking the shadows. He pulled a knife from his belt and proceeded to…" Josef closes his eyes, "I couldn't heal, you know, with the arrow. He took his time…then took my eyes."

Mick gags in horror. "J-j-josef. Please…stop."

"But don't you want to know what _she's _capable of? You said that she calmly rendered a living man to ash." Josef speaks blandly, almost as if he were asking Mick his preference for lunch.

"But…I don't…she didn't…" Sickened, honestly frightened, Mick can't find any words to dispute his old friend. _But she saved me! She went after Beth when I asked…I _sent _her after _Beth…_Oh my God. _The God that he no longer believed in. _She's gone after Beth, what if Josef is right? What if I…? _

"I managed to escape, you know." Josef continues, eying Mick shrewdly as he struggles to breathe, panic for Beth crushing him. "Dumb luck. Someone yelled for help, distracted him. He kicked me one more time, then whispered, 'I'll be back and I'll take your head. I hope you enjoy hell.' A moment later, someone, possibly one of my group's followers, pulled the arrow and dragged me under a bush. Covered me with leaves and left. It took me a few minutes to recover and I saw the guardian return. He was a bit upset that I'd disappeared…" A faint smile crosses Josef's lips, "I was still too weak to move, really, so I saw him turn himself into a bear…"

"_What?_ They can become more than birds?" Mick interrupts, head spinning with possibilities. Insane, potentially devastating possibilities for Beth.

"_More_ than birds?" Josef's eyes narrow, "How would you know that they could even become a _bird_? You haven't told me everything, have you?"

Mick stops breathing. _Here it is. It's over. He's going to kill her. After he kills me._ "Josef…"

"No. Don't even _try_ to 'Josef' me. Tell me _everything_ right now. All of it. I've had enough of your bull_shit_, Mick." Josef snarls. The bottle in his hand shatters with a _pop._ He doesn't even glance down.

Mick closes his eyes. "Lady Hawk didn't come to rescue me today."

"I knew it." Josef hisses.

Mick looks at him and feels his mouth stretch. It isn't a smile. "She came to return my clothes." He nods to Josef, who looks puzzled but amazingly refrains from commenting. "She walked in on me telling Beth what I am."

Josef's mouth falls open. No sound comes out.

"Beth was, understandably, upset after I had to leave the…where she shot Lee Jay…without telling her why." _Or even acknowledging her courage,_ "She guessed where I might be, and came to ask me why I'd left." _Always a reporter, needing to know the why of things, damn her and her curiosity. It's just gotten her killed._ "Beth was…frightened…and left…after I…I told her." Mick takes a deep breath. "I asked Lady Hawk to follow her…to make sure she was okay." _Oh, Beth, I'm so sorry._

Josef stands and turns his back to Mick. His hands are clenched into fists, but his voice is mild. "So there are two people, and please take that with a grain of salt regarding the guardian, that know what you are, know that vampires are real, are currently out there," he waves his hand at the windows, "and you have no way of knowing what damage they are doing even as we speak?"

Mick closes his eyes, "What can I say? What can I possibly do right now? I could silence Beth easily enough," his hands clutch the arms of his chair violently at the thought, "but _what_ could I possibly do about Lady Hawk? What? Try to kill her? I did see her burn two men with her mind. I don't know what else she can do, but I'm pretty sure that she'd come out on top. And then she'd probably be pissed off enough to rethink her apparently benign position on vampires. Then what?" Mick finally opens his eyes, but he's not seeing Josef and the apartment. Beth's terrified face explodes in his head. The little girl he'd sworn to protect, the woman that catches his heart, giving him a little reason to keep going, keep trying. _Beth? Are you okay right now? How am I going to keep you safe? What am I going to do?_

The door buzzer makes both of them jump. Mick glances to Josef. He turns his head back to look at the surveillance and feels his heart freeze in his chest. Hawk is standing at his door. She is in a fully human form with her arms half-crossed, rubbing her temples with one hand. Mick looks back to Josef, sharply.

"That's not the reporter. Can I assume it's the other one? Or do you have more little friends I don't know?" Josef sneers the question at Mick.

"It's Lady Hawk." Mick says without inflection. "I need to open the door. I have to find out what happened with Beth. Please don't do anything stupid, okay?"

"I don't think _you_ need to be telling _me_ about stupid." Josef steps back, into the shadowed corner by the stairs.

Mick takes a breath and walks to the door. His jaw works a moment, hand on the door, and then he pulls it open. "Hawk. What…?"

She looks up as the door opens; her gaze stops a moment at his chest before she blinks and pulls her eyes up to make eye contact, blushing a little. "You, ah, look better."

Mick bites the corner of his lip, just now noticing that he was still shirtless. "I feel better."

"Good." Hawk smiles up at him but as Mick just stares down at her, the smile fades into an expression of slight unease. "Um, can I come in?"

Mick looks away from her over his shoulder to Josef and back. "Sure. I just…sure. Come in." He steps to the side a little to allow her room to pass.

Hawk gives him a puzzled look as she eases herself past him into the apartment. "What's going on, Mick?

He feels her watching him intently as he gently closes the door, his back to her. Mick turns slowly and looks over her head towards Josef.

Josef moves out of the shadow, "I believe he's a little worried about me."

Hawk whirls to face him, eyes wide.

Josef glides closer, path curving slightly as he approaches. His face is hard, mouth twisting into a barely suppressed snarl, and his glare is fastened angrily on Hawk as he takes each step. "Let me introduce myself. I am Josef Konstantin. I understand that you call yourself Lady Hawk. A bit pretentious, don't you think?"

Hawk's head swivels as she follows Josef with her eyes. "And pleased to meet you, too. What's going on, Mick?" she asks without turning her attention from Josef.

Mick steps between Hawk and Josef. "I believe Josef has a few questions for you." He pauses, "I do too." He faces Josef, "You might want to tone it down a little."

"So this is your friend you thought would be upset by me. I get it, now." Hawk offers Josef a smile and holds her hands up. "I'm not here to cause you any grief. I promise."

"Right." Josef finally stops, a few feet from Hawk. "What do you want to ask her, Mick?"

Hawk still doesn't look away from Josef, "Well?"

"How's Beth?" Mick looks at Hawk's profile, searchingly.

"She's unfortunately good at the reporter thing. I followed her to Buzzwire."

Mick inhales sharply and he glances towards Josef, then back again to Hawk.

"She figured out what I am, then recognized me as the hawk and confronted me about it. She was heading to the morgue to cover a story when I left. She seemed to be as okay as anyone could expect after learning that the monsters under her bed as a kid could have been real. She as much as said that she'd keep what she knew behind her teeth for now."

Mick closes his eyes in relief. _Could that be true? Beth, are you really okay?_ "Are you sure?"

"As much as I can be." Hawk jerks her chin at Josef. "Now what? The staring contest is getting a little old."

Mick looks at Josef, whose expression of predatory territoriality hadn't changed one bit then back to Hawk who was matching him glare for glare. He had no idea where to start, which to believe, or why his apartment had become the center of shattered secrets. _I just want to redo last night. Beth! Why can't this all just not have happened?_ "Why did you save me?"

Hawk breaks eye contact with Josef with a start of surprise, and turns to him. Her expression is one of shock and hurt. "Because I was called to help you. Why would you ask me that?"

Josef flashes behind her and grabs her, pinning her arms to her sides. Her eyes flood to silver but she makes no other move.

"Josef, no!" Mick takes a step towards the two of them, Josef snarls at him and he freezes. "What are you doing? She could kill you right now. Josef?"

Josef smiles, showing fang. "I think not. If she tries to burn me, she'll burn herself."

"I promise you, if I felt that it was called for, I'd kill us both without a second thought." Hawk hisses over her shoulder. Her eyes lock with Mick's, "Why? What have I done that you wouldn't trust me?"

Josef breathes into her neck, "It's less what you've done, but what you are. _Guardian_." He spits the last word like an epithet.

"What?" Hawk cranes her neck so that she is looking at Josef, her eyes not an inch from his. "What the hell are you talking about? What did you call me?" She looks back towards Mick. "What is going on here? Mick?"

"You heard what I said." Josef growls. "I've seen things like you before."

"_What?_" It comes out like someone had just kicked her in the stomach, and Hawk goes limp in Josef's arms. "You know what I am?"

Josef looks down at her sharply, then up to Mick. "What the hell?"

Hawk looks up and over her shoulder at Josef. "Please? Tell me."

Josef stares down at her, his mouth falling open. Mick stands frozen by the strange tableau.

Hawk's eyes search Josef's face. A tear runs down her cheek, unnoticed. "Please?"

Josef lets her go as if burned.

She falls to her knees, unable to catch herself in time. She turns and looks up to him, then Mick. Her eyes darken back to blue as both vampires stare at her. She wraps her arms around herself and stays kneeling on the floor. "I don't know what I am. I don't know _why_ I am. I've spent the last eighteen years of my life with screams for help in my head, hiding from my friends, trying to make sense of this madness. I have seen…horrible things. I've done worse. I've fought for so long not knowing what I'm fighting for or why. It's not any better than when I started. I've never found anyone else fighting like me and I wonder what I'm doing here. The visions won't stop, the pain won't stop, and I'm so tired. There is evil out there, and I think I'm the only one that sees it…the only one that can possibly stop it, but I don't even know what it is that I have to stop!" Her voice cracks. "So tell me what I am, Josef. Tell me what I'm supposed to be doing here. Tell me, please."

Mick looks at Josef who returns his gaze and back to Hawk. He sinks down on his heels as her eyes follow him. "I never thought that there could be anything to match eternity as a monster…"

"We aren't monsters, Mick!" Josef interrupts angrily.

"Shut up, Josef." Mick says quietly. He reaches out to touch Hawk on the shoulder. She drops her eyes, looking at the floor. _What must it be like to_ _not know_? She looks back up. "What happened to you? You said you were attacked…?"

She stares at him, then turns away just a little, closing her eyes. "I was fourteen years old. I was on the cross-country team, one of the youngest to make varsity. I'd work out more than we had to. Alone. One day I was running the wooded course and I was hit in the back by something and knocked flat. I pushed myself over and put up my arm just as a huge hawk bound into me with its talons. It tore away; I could see the bones of my arm until the blood filled up the gashes. I stood up, and was hit again. My leg collapsed, I looked down at blood pouring from my thigh. When I looked up a wolf faded into the bushes. I fell down, and I tried to get up, but couldn't. I think I fainted. When I woke, it was almost dark. I didn't hurt anymore and could stand. Other than the blood all over me and the tears in my pants, I was fine. I ran to the locker room, showered and stuffed my bloody clothes in the bottom of the trash. The next day I kept hearing stuff in my head…what people were going to say, just before they said it. Stuff like that. I was sure I was going crazy, had dreamt everything. That night I had the first vision."

She opens her eyes but is focused on something only she could see. "That's when I _knew_ I was going crazy. I felt it. Feel it in my nightmares sometimes, still. Each bullet tearing into me, my heart pumping my life out on the dirty alley. That _thing_ smiling down at me as he whispers, 'Good night,' his eyes strange, filled with blackness." Her voice is like broken glass, "_I didn't know!_ I didn't know that I could help. I just watched him die, through his _own eyes_. I died that day with him. I know how it feels, how it just goes dark." She takes a deep, shuddering breath and looks over into Mick's face, unexpectedly. Her face is still, almost a mask. "That's what happened, Mick. _That's_ what happened to me."

Josef takes a step closer and reaches down, offering her his hand. She looks up at him a long moment, then takes it. He pulls her to her feet and gently steers her to the couch. "Sit. I'll get you something to drink." As he turns to the kitchen his eyes meet Mick's. He frowns warningly, "Don't say it," and continues past. He looks back at Hawk over his shoulder, "You do eat, right?"

She nods, an odd look on her face.

"Mick. Put a shirt on and get her something. I'll get it cleaned up a little in here before you get back." Josef brings a glass of water to Hawk, and she takes it with a slightly shaking hand and nods. He jerks his chin at her, acknowledging her unspoken thanks and begins gathering up the medical kit. "You might want to pick up something stronger to drink as well."

Mick watches his old friend with a feeling of bemusement. "Okay." He takes the stairs two at a time. Pulling on one of his ubiquitous Henleys, he trots back down, "What do you like, Hawk?"

She gives him a blank look, "I'm not really hungry."

Josef sticks his head up from under the sink in the kitchen, "You've got to be kidding. It's almost dusk. If I've got the timeline for today's little drama right, you haven't eaten all day. It may have been four hundred years since I needed food, but I do remember that humans generally need to eat at least a few times a day. And as I think that we all will need a bit of alcohol to get through the next few hours, I insist that you let Mick get you something. I do believe I've pissed you off sufficiently today that I really don't want you drunk on an empty stomach." He reaches up on the counter for the bullet jar and bends back down out of sight.

Mick feels himself smiling at Josef and looks back to Hawk. Her face is a study in conflict as amusement wars with exhaustion across her features. She catches Mick's look as she takes a sip from her glass and turns to him. "I'll quite honestly eat just about anything you might bring me. I'm not picky at all. Whatever's easiest is fine."

He nods to her, "Right. Whatever's easiest. I've got to admit, I haven't really scouted the restaurants in the neighborhood, so I don't know what I'm going to find."

"That's all right." She watches Josef as he picks up shards of glass from the floor by one of the easy chairs in the living room. "Wait."

Mick turns to her, "Yeah?"

"I like Guinness." She flashes him a grin.

He smiles back. "Sure thing."


	7. Chapter 7

I really, really appreciate the reviews! To answer a question, in my mind, Josef began healing when the stake was pulled, which is how he could see the guardian...

* * *

Andy rests her head back on the couch, a headache brewed from the events of the day pounding across her temples. She refuses to think, forcing her mind away from each thought that arises. She closes her eyes, a crease of pain across her brow, _Damn it; why do I end up on the couch with a blazing headache each time I come here?_ Her mind teases her; _It's only been twice, now._ She lifts her lip in a fake snarl at herself, _That's two for two, then._ She reminds herself that she's not supposed to be thinking, and takes a swallow of water. She feels a weight settle next to her on the couch.

"Having conversations with oneself is something of a bad sign." Josef's voice had a hint of a chuckle running through it.

"Who else do I have to talk to?" She lifts her head and opens her eyes to see the vampire arranged artistically next to her. His arm was on the back of the couch, he held a glass of blood in his lap and he had his legs crossed, his ankle resting on his knee.

He takes a sip and his eyes narrow at her, a hint of defiance flashing across his face.

Andy blinks mildly at him, "I really don't care, you know."

"Why not?" He asks with a tone of honest curiosity.

"Because it's your life. I have no interest in crusading. I'll go where I'm called, but other than that, I try to assume it's not my problem. I've got enough without inventing them on my own." She takes a deep breath and rests her head back on the couch, staring at the ceiling. "I've got a question for you, if you're in a sharing mood."

"Why not?" Josef cocks his head at her.

"What made you change your mind about me?" She watches a helicopter go by through the skylight.

A long silence, then, "The look on your face. I've only seen that look once before. From Mick, when he had to kill someone he thought he loved to save a little girl."

"Oh." Andy closes her eyes again, and they both fall silent.

* * *

Josef sips at his drink and watches the guardian as she sleeps on the couch. Her head has rolled a little so that he could see her face. It looks pinched, a line noticeable between her brows. He'd rescued her glass a moment ago, and she hadn't waked. _How can she be the same thing at the two I've seen before?_ He takes another swallow as he tries to make his memories and the being on the couch next to him add up. _Guardians hunt anything supernatural. After the first one, I did my research. They are scary bastards, what they can do. I've never heard of one passing up killing a vampire. What is going on here? _ He shifts position, his uncomfortable thoughts making him feel out of his depth for the first time in a very long time. He raises his glass to his mouth, but it's empty. He frowns down at it for a moment, as his mind continues to turn over everything Mick had told him about the first time that the guardian had helped him. _Wait…He said that she asked him why she'd been sent_ _to _help _him rather than kill him. She was _sent _to him. To _help _him. What the hell? What does that mean? Why would a guardian be sent to help a vamp? What sends them? I haven't ever found any link to a particular religion or deity or any other spiritual tradition. The closest are references to angels but…_

The door opens and Mick steps into the apartment. Josef stands and holds his finger up to his lips. "She's sleeping. I don't know how well she wakes; let me get a few feet away from her."

Mick raises an eyebrow at him, "She can't be worse than I was when she woke me after the hole in my chest."

"Well, she could duck a half-dead vampire; I don't know if I can get out of the way of getting incinerated." Josef whispers as he bends down to pick up the guardian's glass from the table and moves into the kitchen.

Mick shakes his head at him, but sets the two bags in his arms very gently on the counter.

Josef smiles, feeling smug at Mick's caution, and reaches over to see what Mick had found. "What's this?" He pokes at a white bag with some kind of cut up potatoes spilling out of a tray.

"In-N-Out. I remember when they opened down here; everyone loved them. Here's yours." He reaches into the other bag and pulls out a new bottle of scotch. "Since you polished the other one off so enthusiastically, I figured another one would go down well." Mick grins at him and shakes his head.

Josef sniffs, "You dropped a bit of a bomb on me. I was justified."

"You would feel justified if you'd dropped by for a social call." Mick teases him over his shoulder as he approaches Lady Hawk.

Josef sees his back tense as he sinks down next to her. _So he's not as comfortable with her as he pretends… _"I don't do social calls."

Mick glances back to him and opens his mouth but shakes his head a little and sighs. He turns back to the guardian and gingerly reaches out to touch her hand. Josef holds his breath.

Lady Hawk's eyes snap open and she sits up sharply. Her eyes briefly flash a little silver but quickly darken.

"Hey." Mick nods a little at her. "I'm back. I got you a burger and fries. That okay?" He looks over his shoulder to Josef.

Josef picks up the white bag and shakes it a little at Lady Hawk. "I guess I lose."

Lady Hawk wrinkles her forehead a little at him and looks at Mick.

Mick half smiles. "He was worried that you might wake up in the same kind of mood that I did last week."

"Oh." Lady Hawk looks over at Josef. "I've learned to check before breaking anything." She stands, rolling her head a little to stretch her neck, "Or anyone."

Mick smiles at Josef sardonically, "How about dinner?"

"You offering?" Josef eyes Lady Hawk.

"Josef!" Mick steps in front of Lady Hawk, his posture only half jokingly protective and his eyes harden slightly.

"It's okay." Lady Hawk puts her hand on his arm and he looks down at her. She's smiling, relaxed. "I get the joke."

Mick frowns as he looks to Josef, "But what if you didn't?"

"Easy." Josef puts up his hands to Mick, "I think the guardian can decide on her own what's appropriate." He looks at her, eyebrow raised. "She's a big girl."

"Yeah. Feel free to take a nibble." Lady Hawk gives him a dirty look and Mick laughs.

"What?" Josef looks back and forth between them, as Lady Hawk grins up at Mick. Neither respond. "Seriously, what am I missing?"

"Bite her. You'll figure it out." Mick steps into the kitchen and slides open the refrigerator panel.

Josef can only shake his head at Mick, mystified by the obvious joke between the two of them.

Lady Hawk reaches into the white bag and pulls out the tray of limp fries. She grins to Mick, "You are evil."

"Okay. Fine. Have your little jokes." Josef pouts and folds his arms.

"Don't worry, we will." Lady Hawk puts a few fries in her mouth and closes her eyes in pleasure. "This is great. I love In-N-Out."

Mick smiles again at her. "Good. There's Guinness in the other bag."

"Wonderful." Lady Hawk is barely understandable through a mouthful of hamburger.

Josef glances at Mick. His young friend is relaxed, smiling more in the last five minutes than he's seen in years. Josef feels a tiny twinge of jealousy, but forces his face into a pleasant arrangement as he accepts a glass of blood from him. "Glad I brought the good stuff. I didn't plan on being over here this long."

"I appreciate your help today, Josef. I really do." Mick stretches the shoulder that was damaged earlier.

Lady Hawk swallows; she's inhaled half the burger already. "Josef, about earlier. Can you tell me anything?"

Josef takes a deep breath and compresses his lips a little, _You knew this was coming. What do you say? That she's some kind of potentially psycho killing machine? That the two you've seen before up close and personal were trying to take your head?_ "We should go sit down." He turns to Mick, "Bring the alcohol."

Mick lifts an eyebrow at Josef, but picks up the bottle of scotch and pulls the six-pack of Guinness out of the bag. Lady Hawk follows, shoving the rest of her burger back in its sack and pulling two glasses from the shelf. Josef settles on the easy chair from earlier and Lady Hawk and Mick settle on the couch.

She picks up a bottle of the beer and frowns; Mick reaches over and pops the top off. "Wow, thanks." She takes a swallow, and looks to Josef.

Josef looks down to his glass and spins it in his hands. "I've been around a while. A bit over four hundred years. I've seen a lot in that time, but the funny thing is that more stays the same than changes. Twice before I've seen…beings…with similar characteristics as you. The first was when I was in my late forties, just as the war was ending." Josef puts his glass down, not at all hungry.

Lady Hawk's mouth slowly drops open. "You mean the 'Thirty Years War', don't you? Wasn't that in the early sixteen hundreds?"

Josef glances up, "I guess they do still teach a little history. We didn't call it that; I don't remember when someone labeled that awful time something so inane. But yes, I was still in Germany at the time. Mick, I told you about most of it, already."

Mick's forehead wrinkles. "I don't think you need to go into much detail, Josef."

Josef feels a smile curl the edge of his lips, "I agree, old friend." _No need to give the guardian ideas._ "I was involved in an…incident…where a guardian led a raid on a small village where a group of vampires had recently relocated. The…incident…was quite…violent. I lost several good friends." He pauses and Mick hangs his head and rubs his eyes. Lady Hawk looks between the both of them with a curious and sympathetic expression, but stays quiet. "That's where I learned first hand about your ability to shape shift."

Lady Hawk nods. "Okay."

When she doesn't offer any more, Josef continues. "At first he looked like a man with wings. His were a deep brown. It seemed like the…people with him…murdering the villagers…were in awe of him and following him willingly." Josef looks up at Lady Hawk.

She looks pained. "I can't imagine that happening now. I've had a few close…encounters…with authorities. I'm sure I'd be met with machine guns or worse, these days."

Josef looks at her a moment then sighs, "Probably. Anyway, it was my escape that led to that guardian shape-shifting into a bear."

Lady Hawk raises her eyebrows and blinks slowly. "Huh. I wouldn't have thought…a bear?"

"Yep. Why are you surprised?" Josef asks. Mick pours him some scotch and pushes the glass to his side of the table.

"I just wouldn't think that…just how many animal-spirit-torturer things _are_ there? It was a goshawk and a wolf and a…ah…that turned me. What the hell else is there?" She takes a quick gulp of Guinness, and glances to Mick.

Josef eyes her and reaches for the glass of scotch, glancing at Mick whose eyes narrow a little and he nods imperceptibly. _So you noticed that too, then. Okay, she doesn't trust us either. This is becoming an interesting little chess match._ "I don't know. But turning into a bear seemed to be something that this guardian's followers weren't prepared for. They panicked and went after him. I saw him shot a few times with arrows and he fled to the woods. Right past my hiding spot, in fact."

Mick inhales sharply, "I wondered…"

Lady Hawk looks at him sharply and frowns.

Josef takes a sip of scotch, enjoying ignoring the guardian's unspoken questions. "So can I assume that turning into a hawk is how you picked the name 'Lady Hawk'"?

"I didn't pick it. A six-year-old girl called me that. And, yes, it's because she first saw me as a goshawk. She'd been nearly killed by an avalanche. I was called and shifted to the goshawk because it's my most mobile and least conspicuous form. I can sort of see body heat and any movement as well. I found her, got her out, healed her and then was stuck because she'd freeze to death if I left her there, I'd scare her to death if I tried a bigger form that could carry her out of there without revealing my face. I had no choice but to shift to the winged human. She asked if I was an angel. I told her no. She said that she'd call me 'Lady Hawk' because she'd just seen that movie. The local paper picked it up, and there are a few paranormal websites that list me as an urban legend." Lady Hawk half smiles, "So, yeah, it's pretty silly, but I kinda like it. Reminds me of little Annaliese."

"What?!" Josef coughs, heart contracting with surprise and pain.

Lady Hawk sits up sharply, "I don't know what you mean."

Mick puts a hand on her arm. "Annaliese is the name of one of Josef's close friends that was killed during the guardian's attack on the village."

"Oh God. I'm sorry." Lady Hawk looks stricken.

Josef swallows back the anger and pain that the name called forth, and forcibly arranges his face into a neutral mask. "So what's your real name?"

Mick leans forward protectively, "Just call her Hawk, Josef."

Lady Hawk looks to Josef, he watches, as she seems to struggle with something for a long moment. "Its okay, Mick." She closes her eyes, and takes a breath. "My name is Anderyn." She opens her eyes and shrugs, "My mom was Welsh. Everyone calls me Andy."

Josef cocks his head, "Huh. Human bird. That's a weird coincidence, you do realize that?"

"Please don't start on weird. I'm having a conversation with two vampires over Guinness and Scotch about 'guardians', of which I am supposed to be one. My name is the least weird thing about this whole situation." Andy finishes her bottle, and pulls another from the carrier and hands it to Mick.

He smiles as he pulls the top off, and hands it back. "I'm with Josef."

"Gah. What is this, vampire solidarity week?" She takes a long pull from the new bottle.

Josef and Mick exchange looks and start laughing. She looks back and forth between them, "What?"

Smothering a feeling of near hysteria, Josef snickers, "You wouldn't share earlier. I have no intention of doing so now."

"Fine." Andy crosses her arms and leans back into the couch, holding the Guinness close to her chest.

Mick laughs harder, and wipes his eyes. "You two make a great pair. I don't know who'd out-stubborn who, if it came down to a contest."

"I'd win." Josef and Andy say in unison. Josef looks at her and she meets his gaze, lifting her chin a little. Josef feels a smile tug at the corner of his mouth and sees a matching one on Andy's face.

"Okay. Back to what the hell you are." Josef nods at Andy, _Let me see if I can get through this without ending up a cinder._


	8. Chapter 8

"A few months after I saw the first guardian, I decided to learn what I could about them. Mind you, I had no idea what it was…I was afraid that he might have actually been some sort of angel…after all he looked like the popular images of the time." Josef sips at his Scotch; it goes down better than the blood.

"Yeah. Only recently did angels' wings turn white." Andy rubs the bridge of her nose. "Please tell me that I'm not the thing that angels are based off of…I'm trying to cling to a tiny scrap of faith, here." She looks up, her eyes a little desperate, "Because if there isn't any higher benevolent power, just demons and damaged spirits and horrible people, I think I might have a bit of a breakdown right here."

Mick gives her a long look, and pours himself a generous measure of Scotch. "I lost my faith fifty years ago. You get over it." His voice was rough.

_Man, when will you stop chasing the past? You aren't at all 'over it'; how _do _you lie so well to yourself, but anyone can see through it but you?_ Josef watches Mick and takes another mouthful of Scotch to try to wash the lump of frustration from his throat at his friend's stubborn resentment about his fate. Josef glances to Andy, noting the troubled expression she was directing towards Mick. _See. She doesn't even know what the hell he was referring to, and look at her face. Damn it, Mick. You make me so mad at you sometimes._

Josef shakes his head, but continues, "I traveled to Heidelberg, the university town, and settled in. Enrolling was a bit of a bitch, you needed papers that I'd lost when our house burned." He swallows down the bitter memory. "I eventually finagled new ones," _By killing the bastard that had some, _"And became Charles Fitzgerald, intrepid Englishman; raised in Germany by my third cousin to cover my accent, returning to school to study theology to bring my dead parents some honor."

Andy looks away from Mick at his tone and raises her eyebrows at Josef; he glares defensively back at her. _Go ahead. Judge me. And _your _hands aren't stained with blood._

She frowns a little, then closes her eyes and turns her head away, compressing her lips.

Josef blinks at her reaction, _What was that?,_ but continues. "After about six months of carefully cultivating the professors' trust, I was finally allowed access to the University library." He smiles, _And almost forgot why I was there…So many books, so much to immerse myself in, I could forget Annaliese for hours when I was there. I'd hide from everything in that wonderful musty hall._

Mick clears his throat. Josef jumps and looks sharply at him. Mick nods a little, lifting an eyebrow.

"Sorry." Josef shakes his head a little to clear it, and continues, "I stayed there seven years. I found a surprising amount of references to mythic animal-human mixes…a number of Gaelic and pagan ones, the angels of Christian traditions, and finally a reference to 'guardians' that mentioned a few characteristics that gave me hope that it was a real lead. I found it in a hand written note in a manuscript of one of the retired scholars. I traced his work and found that he was still alive and had returned to his home village only three years previously, when the political climate had stabilized a little bit. I hadn't ever met him while he was still there; I remember feeling so frustrated after finding the University ledger with his tenure dates. At least there weren't roving mercenary armies decimating the populace in the smaller towns anymore, so I decided to try to track him down for an interview."

"Wow. You dedicated all that time to figuring out what the bear-guy was?" Andy shakes her head, an expression of incredulousness on her face.

_Oh I did; after what he did, what he caused all those people to do to the villagers, I planned to hunt the bastard for as long as it took. I was determined to avenge Annaliese._ Josef just nods.

Mick leans forward and puts his head in his hands, "It was pretty bad, Hawk. He had cause."

"Oh." She mouths the word silently and looks at Josef. Her eyes seem to plead for forgiveness, asking wordlessly for a chance for a separate judgment, and Josef feels his throat tighten. _No. Never. No matter what, you are still one of them. You don't trust me, I don't trust you. That is enough of a truce. I'll tell you my story, but that doesn't make it okay. Nothing that you can do would make it okay. Ever._ Some of his anger must have shown in his face; she blanches a little and pulls back.

Josef re-schools his expression as Mick looks up at Andy's movement next to him and frowns at her then looks quizzically to Josef. Andy pulls her legs up on the couch and curls into a ball, but rather than looking comfortable, she appears to be trying to disappear. Josef feels a hint of satisfaction and smiles a bit to Mick. "Thanks. It's okay."

Josef remembers his Scotch and lifts the glass for another mouthful. He rolls the fiery liquid over his tongue, allowing the burn to distract him from the searing memories. He swallows and continues, "The short version is that I did find the old scholar. And he was willing to meet with me, seemed tickled that someone was interested in his work. We met several times, and he revealed that he had been rescued by a guardian in his youth. His tale was actually quite interesting, and the gentleman a lively storyteller. He even had convinced his rescuer to speak with him and he showed me his notes from the interview. That one's experience was almost exactly like yours: attacked as a teen, left to figure out what was going on by himself, and eventually working out that he was getting visions of people that he was supposed to save."

Josef glances at Andy, she hadn't moved from the curled up position and her eyes are wary as they meet his. _Nervous? Good; it's about to get a lot worse, kid._ "He tried to go to his clergy for a bit of guidance and found himself at the wrong end of a tribunal. They tried him on suspicion of witchery, and he lost." Josef smiles a little, "He escaped by shape-shifting and disappearing in front of the entire village." _I have to admit, according to the story, the guardian had style. Bridge burned with maximum flash. Guess if you're going to have to prove that you're a monster, you ought to go all out._ Josef looks directly at Andy, "He shifted into a griffon."

Mick straightens as if someone jammed a rod down his spine. "_What?!"_ He looks frantically back and forth between Josef and Andy, and settles back to Josef. "Please tell me that you are kidding. Josef?"

"Nope." Josef narrows his eyes towards Andy, who was studying her Guinness with more care than was called for.

Mick turns to her, face white, eyes wide. "Hawk?"

Josef can't believe that she could shrink any smaller, but somehow she does. "Yeah."

"Can you…?" Mick doesn't finish the thought.

She begins shaking. "Not a griffon."

"Then _what_?" Mick pulls away from her.

She looks even more miserable, and Josef smiles a little. "I can become a unicorn."

Josef and Mick both stare.

"Huh. That kind of wrecks the predator theory." Josef quips.

Mick slowly sits back against the couch for a long moment before taking a breath, "Josef. Did you _have_ to set us up like this?" He reaches for, and downs, his glass of Scotch. He looks at Andy, huddled in the corner of the couch, and pours a half-glass full. He leans towards her; she follows his movement with wide eyes. He reaches out and takes the bottle of Guinness from her and puts the Scotch into her hand. "Drink."

She obeys, sputtering slightly but swallowing until the glass is empty. Mick reaches out and takes the glass back, setting the glass and the bottle of Guinness on the coffee table. Mick turns to Josef. "You did that on purpose. Why?"

Josef recoils from the heat in Mick's voice. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. If you wanted to get me for holding back earlier, you could have just said so. Hawk didn't deserve that." Mick glares at Josef, hands clenched into fists on his lap.

"And you don't mind that she's hiding secrets? You don't wonder why she didn't want to tell you about her most powerful form?" Josef leans forward. "Why she didn't mention it earlier when she asked about the bear? Or when she was telling you about getting turned into a guardian?"

"I never saw it." Andy whispers from the corner of the couch.

Both vampires' heads snap towards her. "I didn't lie when I told you about the day I was turned. I never saw it."

"And why didn't you mention it later?" Mick's voice is soft, without any edge to it. Josef snorts a little, and Mick throws a sharp look towards him.

"It's crazy. I almost never use it. And why does it matter anyway? I turn into a goshawk, wolf, and unicorn. I can read your thoughts, feel your emotions and heal almost any trauma. I control energy, which is how I burned those two men and almost wrecked L. A. last week. Okay? Enough? I still don't want to hurt either of you." She looks at Josef, and sits up a little. "I know that something awful happened to you because of a guardian. I am honestly sorry about that. But I am not that guardian! I didn't do it. I can't imagine doing anything to hurt you or Mick. I don't know if I missed something along the way, maybe I am supposed to be some crusading freak. All I know is that I'd give anything to be normal, and if I can't have that, I'd like to at least be able to trust someone."

She stands abruptly and her outline blurs briefly; wings appear. She backs around the edge of the couch as Josef stands with a hiss. Mick also rises, stepping between the two of them. "Enough, Josef."

"I'm leaving. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, for bringing up memories better left forgotten." Andy continues to back away, into a more open spot of the apartment.

Mick dives over the back of the couch and catches Andy's arms by the wrists. "Wait."

She looks up at him and her face is hard, jaw clenched. "Let me go."

"No." Josef can only see Mick's back, but he hears steel in his voice.

"Mick. You need to let me go. Now." Andy's wings are half-spread and trembling.

"Or what? I know that you'll never come back if you leave now. I don't want you to go like this." Mick holds her wrists in front of his chest; Josef can see that Andy's eyes were filling with silver.

"Watch out." Josef warns as he steps around the chair.

"Shut the _fuck_ up, Josef." Mick glares sharply over his shoulder. "Where the hell do you get off? Hawk has put up with enough of your shit. I have too. You screw with my head earlier, making me panic about Beth, about Hawk. You then proceed to twist us both in knots with your games. Hawk's a guardian. She saved my ass, and has done nothing to threaten either of us, even when provoked. Get over it, or get out! Now!"


	9. Chapter 9

Andy stands with Mick's gentle but irresistible grip pulling her arms to his chest. She holds her breath as he snarls at Josef. "Well?"

Josef's expression waivers between anger and surprise, "What do you mean? You trust her?"

"I do. More than you at this moment. I don't think you even know what your motivation is right now." Mick looks back down at Andy, "Will you please stay? I'm sorry. I know that's not enough, but it's all I have."

"I ca…" Searing pain interrupts her as Mick's face fades, and is replaced by eyes with no iris or white, just blackness, holding the cold muzzle of a gun to her throat. The apparition smiles and whispers, "Humanity falls when hope dies. Good night." Her fear and shock swirl chaotically through her mind, settling briefly on an image of a big silver bird fearlessly gazing directly into her eyes. She grasps at the tiny spark of possible salvation and her mind screams, _Lady Hawk! Are you real? Help me! _ Andy gasps, the plea for help ringing through her head, and jerks herself out of the vision.

Mick is shaking her shoulder, supporting her against his chest. His expression softens with relief as Andy focuses on his eyes, "What happened? You went somewhere else there for a minute. You scared me!"

"I've got to go. Now. A minute ago." She stiffens and Mick helps her balance on her feet. She looks up at him, shaking with reaction. _Dear sweet God, help me. It's Beth. I can't tell him. I can't bring him, there's no time to explain._

Mick shakes his head, "What's going on?"

Andy again tries to pull away, "Vision. S-someone needs my help. Now."

"What? Oh!" He lets her arms go sharply and takes a step back. "Go then. But please come back. Okay? Please?"

Andy looks at him, feeling the urgency of responding to the vision squeeze the breath from her chest, and nods.

Rather than allowing the call to pull her back in, she fixes the scene from a moment ago in her mind, and as she jumps she pulls herself between both time and space. She bursts from icy darkness into warm twilight and allows all the frustration and uncertainty from the last few hours to shift her into the wolf before she even touches the pavement of the dim parking structure. Her hands turn to paws as they hit the concrete and she relinquishes control of the great canine, allowing the instincts of the wolf to overcome her human reluctance and fear of the imminent violence.

Beth and her attacker turn sharply. He has her pinned to his side, and swings the gun towards Andy. She snarls, and leaps for the man. He pulls the trigger twice, Andy twists in midair like an overlarge ferret and feels the fur on her flank ripple as the bullets brush her without harm. He brings the gun back towards Beth, too late, as Andy crashes into him and rips the gun from him with a crushing bite. Blood sprays her chest and throat from his arm, and Beth is knocked from his grip to fall heavily to the hard pavement. Andy turns towards her and screams with her mind, _Run! _Beth scrambles away and ducks behind a support pillar.

Andy swivels her head towards the man, growl rumbling in her chest. He snarls back, flexing fingers on the damaged arm as the bleeding stops and the gash heals. He turns black, hate-filled eyes at her and hisses. She pins her ears flat to her skull, and feels the tiny rational side of her scream with panic, _Demon!_ She reaches with her mind, deep below the bedrock, below the roots of the mountains to the east, to touch the energy burning sluggishly below the feet of the millions of people of the city. She pulls at it, nerves screaming, until it rises and follows the channel of her mind where she dams it with nothing but will from exploding from her. Her eyes burn silver; glowing softly, like a mirror reflecting the opposite of the creature in front of her.

He smiles, and lifts his arms. The lights flicker, and Andy leaps to the side. A pillar of fire explodes where she'd been crouching, and the demon's face twists with rage. As the demon recovers, Andy shifts back to human. The demon again calls the fire, but instead of dodging, Andy pushes it from her, powering her mental barriers with the energy burning in her mind. She fights against the pressure of the fire against her shields, and takes a step towards the demon. It feels like walking into a hurricane, but she forces herself closer and the demon snarls, "What foolishness is this? What do you hope to gain? Your kind cannot harm me."

Andy simply smiles, and the creature recoils from her expression. She manifests the sword as she releases her hold on the power clawing at the barriers in her mind and lets the energy flow through it. She lunges and drives the incandescent crystal blade through the demon's chest. The creature screams soundlessly; Andy allows the power to pour through her it until its body is as bright as the sword. Mind on fire, Andy breaks her connection to the energy stream, as it threatens to overwhelm her control, searing along her bones and nerves. She sways above a pile of white ash a moment, then the sword falls from her nerveless fingers and clatters to the floor, gouging chips from the concrete. She falls to her knees, her head exploding with the pain of the backlash of energy.

_Shit. Too much._ She grits her teeth from the pain; nausea grips her and her overburdened heart pounds frantically. Her vision greys, and she falls on her side, curled in a fetal position. She feels a touch on her shoulder and jerks her head towards it. Beth is kneeling next to her, face completely white, eyes dilated with fear. Andy moans and closes her eyes again as another wave of agony and nausea wash over her.

"Oh God. What's wrong?" Andy feels Beth gripping her shoulder, the touch like fire as Beth's fear and confusion echo through Andy's raw nerves and she whines and tries to pull away. "Wake up, please. Please?!"

"Stop. Let go." Andy pants, "Please. Now."

Beth pulls away; the phantom echoes of her terror mercifully cut off, and Andy takes a breath of relief. "Sorry. Just… head hurts…fight. Give me a minute." Another surge of pain hits her and she stiffens until it recedes.

Beth's voice wavers, "O-ok-kay. Sh-should I c-call someone? An ambulance?"

"No!" Andy tries to push herself upright but her arm collapses. She rolls half onto her back to look at Beth. "They can't help. Please don't."

"Is there anyone?" Beth's hands shake as she holds her phone like a lifeline, a tangible scrap of normalcy, a chance to turn the situation over to someone else.

Andy grimaces as she feels a hint of Beth's desperation, _Only the one person I bet right now you'd do anything to not have to call._ She shakes her head, "No."

"Oh God, what do I do then?" Beth's voice cracks.

"Go. Leave me, go home. That thing is gone, dead. You're safe." Andy closes her eyes against a fresh wave of pain.

"B-but I can't leave you." The fear radiating from her betrays to Andy how much she wishes she could.

"Yes you can. Go." Andy tries to resurrect her mental shields but her mind screams as the energy needed burns along channels seared by the sheer amount of power she'd had to pour through the demon to destroy it. Her shields waver and fail, and Beth's terror—of both what had just happened and of _her_—pours over her unprotected mind, salt on her wounds, and she chokes back a sob of frustration. "Leave damn it! Please God, just leave."

Beth shrinks away from the harshness of Andy's voice, but stays. "I can't leave you here like this. I just can't. What do you need?"

_Your fear a hundred yards from me! _"I just need some time, please. Go."

"But it's not safe to stay here, alone. I…look what just happened…" She trails off.

Andy grimaces at Beth's stubbornness and in desperation tries unvarnished truth, "You're hurting me. Your fear hurts me. I can't stop feeling it, I'm too tired. Please just go!"

"What? My fear? You can feel my fear? How?" Beth does at least stand and takes a few steps back away from Andy. The pressure of her emotions against Andy's mind eases slightly with the scrap of distance.

"I just can. Go. I can't explain now." Andy closes her eyes and takes shallow breaths to try to focus and regain some control. She hears footsteps move away from her, and breathes deeply in relief as the pressure on her mind fades as Beth finally leaves. _Okay stupid. Now what?_ Knives of pain continue stabbing through her brain with each beat of her heart. She slowly pushes herself over until she's kneeling, forehead on the gritty concrete. She pants with effort and opens her eyes a crack. Her sword is a few inches from her left hand and she reaches for it. She lays her hand on the hilt and opens herself to assimilating it back into her bones with a twist of her mind. As the crystal meshes back into her, she feels a small vibration against her cheek. She lifts her head and preternaturally bright headlights blind her. _Fuck. I can't even crawl yet._ Andy lifts a hand to shield her eyes as the car pulls closer and veers slightly to roll silently to a stop right beside her. The driver's door opens and Beth stumbles around the front of the car. Andy pushes herself almost upright in surprise, "Wha…?"

"I'm getting you out of here." She opens the passenger side door and turns to Andy. "I'm going to have to touch you to get you into the car." She bends down and gingerly offers Andy a hand.

Andy feels her mouth sag open a little, but reaches up. Beth takes Andy's wrist and pulls her arm across her shoulders and pulls Andy upright. Andy's vision swims and she closes her eyes against the dizziness and Beth's gritty determination covering her screaming panic. Beth guides her the few steps to the car. "Watch your head, now." Beth grunts, and Andy collapses onto the seat. Beth closes the door, and goes around to climb into the drivers side.

Andy feels the Prius roll silently forward and she opens her eyes a second but quickly closes them as the movement triggers a bit of nausea. "Where?"

"We're going to my house. It'll be safe for you there." Beth's voice is tight and rough with emotion.

"But…" Andy opens her eyes with surprise and stares at Beth's profile.

Beth glances briefly towards Andy, and offers her a tight, wavering smile, "But what? You just saved my life. I'm not leaving you in the parking structure of the morgue for God's sake."

Andy blinks at her and lets her head fall back against the seat. "Okay. Thank you."

Beth continues, "And maybe, when you feel a little better, you can explain to me what the hell is going on."

_As if I know._ Andy coughs, "I'll do my best."


	10. Chapter 10

Mick stares at the place Hawk had just been moments ago. _Andy. Her name is Andy._ He takes a breath and reaches up to rub the bridge of his nose. _Vampires don't get headaches. Why do I feel like one is coming on?_

"What are you going to do?" Josef's voice is without inflection.

That lack told Mick that Josef was actually upset about the last few minutes. Mick grinds his teeth. _Wonderful._ _Cue the fit of pique. _He turns and crosses his arms as he tries to arrange his face into a suitably neutral expression. "That depends on what you mean by 'do'."

Josef looks like he swallowed a lemon. "About the mess you made. The guardian. The reporter. The fact that they know about us and neither are under control yet."

"Funny that." Mick takes a very deep breath. Anger was fine, but he was not going to let Josef bait him. "I seem to remember Andy said that Beth was going to keep her mouth shut. _And_ that 'the guardian' was making a real effort to placate _you_ rather than the other way around."

Josef crosses his arms, echoing Mick. "What? She lied. I only made her tell the truth."

"Right." Mick shakes his head slowly. _What the hell is up with you? Dr. Jekyll has nothing on you._ "She didn't want to go into the odd little details of her life and powers. Seems that I know someone else that tends towards keeping his past private."

"And I seem to remember a rather long conversation where I was sharing my past…with the guardian, no less." Josef frowns, "When did you get all curious, anyway?"

"About when you decided to go all Sméagol on me." Mick smiles at the look on Josef's face.

"I'm going to ignore that." Josef reaches for his glass of Scotch on the side table.

"Come on, Josef. What is bothering you so much about Andy? I get the 'almost killed, must exact vengeance' part of the motivation, but Andy is definitely not the guardian that went after you. So why are you so determined to be an ass about her?" Mick closes his eyes as the last sentence leaves his mouth. _Nice. Tactful. Ever try to think before you talk, St. John?_

Josef freezes, and slowly turns to Mick. His expression chills and his voice takes on an edge of frosty iron, "Perhaps the 'ass' comes out when I'm faced with an arrogant little Pollyanna that trusts anything mortal over the experience of four hundred years of surviving. Trust is for the young. It's selected out of the population with age."

Mick blanches at the venom in Josef's voice. "I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't have said that. I just…"

"You just _what_? Josef hisses.

"I just wish that sometimes you'd just try to let go of a little of the cynicism." Mick bites his lip, "Does the bad outweigh the good that much as time passes, Josef?"

Josef stares a Mick a long moment, lip slightly curled. "Everyone betrays you eventually. Everyone, Mick. If in no way other than leaving you…alone." He turns away and tosses back the contents of his glass.

Mick stares at his friend's back, and feels as if Josef just punched him in the gut. _Whoa. This isn't what I expected. Is this what's covered by the 'devil may care' façade? Shit._ He slowly moves around the couch and sinks down to perch on the edge. He puts his head in his hands while his mind reels from Josef's vitriolic revelation. _What do you say to that? He's right. He's so fucking right._ Flashes of faces parade through his head. Friends, family, colleagues, even his vampire wife; all gone. Dead. _How much of this can someone take? How much before you let go and allow yourself to quit caring? Quit trying? _

"Damn it, Mick." Josef sighs. "I didn't mean it like that."

Mick looks up, "Like what? Like this damn curse is going to continue to take every single thing I'll ever care about until I end? "

Josef sits in the chair facing Mick and leans forward. "No Mick." As Mick glares at him, he closes his eyes and rubs his forehead, "All right. It gets to me sometimes, yeah. But most of the time what I have is enough. So don't try to blame me for your dark and despair. You get to make your time what you want it to be."

"Right. And I so want to be a vampire. I had a lot of say in that one." Mick snorts sarcastically.

"If you weren't turned, then what? What would have been your chains? That Coraline abandoned you when you weren't pretty enough for her any more? Or if you hadn't run into vampires, what then? I'm sure you were perfectly fine coming home after the war. That you were happy playing in that little D-list band and you would have settled down with someone and had a normal little life. Right. Feel free to wallow in the pit of despair, but don't lie to yourself as to why you're there." Josef leans back into the chair and eyes Mick with a frown.

Mick glares back at Josef, "I didn't get a chance to find out, now did I? Instead I got dragged along on a nightmare by the woman I loved more than life. And life was exactly what she cost me. I just have to keep walking."

"Look. You know my opinion of this rather hoary little tale. Can we get back to the point?" Josef mimes a bird flying. "Guardian?"

"She'll come back when she's done. With whatever she's doing." Mick frowns a little, _And what exactly is that? Where did she end up?_

"This isn't going to end well. And I am not in the mood to either argue any more with you, or to join you in your mad dash towards an unpleasant fate. I warned you. I dug silver out of you. I brought you blood. I'm done. Call me when you find some sense." Josef stands and stalks to the door. He hesitates as he opens it, but then leaves, shutting the door gently after himself without looking back.

Mick stares after him for a long moment before he drops his head and rubs the back of his neck. _Now what? I guess I just wait._ For what exactly, he can't tell.

"C'mon. Just a few more steps." Beth awkwardly jams her keys into the lock of her apartment door while steadying the woman leaning against the wall of the hallway. The door swings open finally, and she puts her arm around the woman's waist and pulls her into the apartment. Guiding her to the sofa, Beth glances at her face. She's almost transparently pale and has kept her eyes clenched shut since getting out of the car. "Here you go." Beth releases her grip on the woman, and she collapses on the soft cushions. "Can I get you anything? Something to drink?"

"Do you have any painkillers? Ibuprofen or something?" The woman pushes herself up until she is sitting, folded at the waist with her head in her hands.

"Yeah. Just a second." Beth turns and trots to the bathroom. She grabs a bottle of Advil and goes to the kitchen. She fills a glass with water from the tap and brings it and the painkillers to her erstwhile guest. "Here."

The woman looks up and reaches out with shaking hands to accept the glass and bottle of pills. She sets the water on the coffee table and fumbles with the lid on the Advil. Beth is about to reach out to help her when she successfully pops off the top. She pours a small handful of the tablets into her palm and tosses the entire lot into her mouth then reaches out and drinks down half of the glass of water before Beth can even yelp. "What are you doing? That was, like, twenty pills, you're going to kill yourself!"

The woman's mouth stretches into a pain-filled smile. "I wish. I'll be fine. I burn through stuff like this pretty quickly. I'll buy you a new bottle."

"I don't want a new bottle. I want to know what the hell is going on!" Beth sinks down in the chair opposite the woman_. Lady Hawk is in my apartment. Mick is a vampire and Lady Hawk is on my couch. I am most certainly going…no…have gone…mad._

The woman allows her head to drop back down into her hands. "What do you want to know?"

"I don't…everything!" Beth hears her own voice crack unpleasantly.

Her head still in her hands, the woman looks over at Beth. There's a chuckle in her voice, "That's a kinda big subject, and my head still hurts an awful lot. Any chance you could narrow it down a little to help me out?"

Beth stares at her a moment. "What's your name?"

"What a wonderful place to start." She pauses a moment. "Won't 'Lady Hawk' do?"

"I…" Beth frowns at her, "No. Who are you? What are you? Why are you here? What do you have to do with Mick? Wh…"

"Whoa." The woman pushes herself up and leans gingerly back against the couch. "Let's take this a little slower. I'm not quite running on all four cylinders, yet."

"What's your name?" Beth asks again and rubs her shoulder; she can feel the bruises already starting to scream at her.

"Eighteen years of secrecy, and now I'm just telling everybody everything…This is great." The woman sighs, "My name is Andy."

"Andy?" Beth cocks her head to the side, trying to reconcile the name with the woman she saw nearly bite the hand off a man while shaped like a huge wolf.

"Yes, it's short for something." Andy frowns, "And no, I am not telling the reporter, sorry. Aside from me liking to stay out of federal experiments, it would put you into too much danger if anyone ever finds out that you've ever seen me."

"Okay, I can accept that, I guess. What are you?" Beth pulls her shoes off with a grimace, noticing that her left ankle was sore.

Andy lets out a short laugh, "I guess I'm a 'guardian.'"

"You guess?" Beth shakes her head a little.

"I'm sorry. It's a long awkward story. I am a guardian…I can do…a lot of crazy stuff." She smiles a bit ruefully, "As you saw. I help people, and otherwise try to stay under the radar. That's really all there is to it."

"But how? I mean, where'd you come from? How do you exist?" Beth leans forward with curiosity.

"I don't know. I mean, I used to be like you…before I found out that the bogeyman was real. I don't know why most people don't know…but there's a lot of stuff out there that's pretty scary. I seem to have been made to do something about it. I really don't know much more than that, honest." Andy's expression was earnest, as if she was willing Beth to believe her.

Beth frowns, head spinning. "So…what was that thing that went after me tonight?"

"I don't know if you want the answer to that." Andy's brow furrows.

Beth sticks her chin out, "Of course I do. It's my job to uncover nasty mysteries, whether or not I can tell anyone about them."

Andy eyes her with an expression of doubt.

"I was at the morgue, bribing an attendant to photograph the bodies of women that had been tortured to death! I think I can handle it." Beth folds her arms across her chest.

Andy smiles a little, "Okay." She pauses, "It was a demon."

Beth feels strangely calm, "Would you happen to know why a demon might have wanted to kill me?"

"I can only guess. It may have had something to do with…" Andy winces, "Mick."

"Mick." Beth closes her eyes. "Why Mick?"

"The string of unpleasant coincidences that have been dogging him lately." Andy sighs. "Until what happened to you, I didn't put it together. But the demon going directly after you connected the dots."

"I really don't understand." Beth rubs her temple.

Andy eyes her with sympathy, and reaches for the bottle of Advil and holds it up, "You want?"

"Yes, please." Beth takes the bottle gratefully.

"A lot of the time, when I get called to help someone it's because something has happened that wasn't supposed to." Andy looks at Beth. "Because something was meddling that had no right to. I think that was happening to Mick. Something wanted him either dead or broken. I don't know why, or what, though."

Beth frowns, "So why me?"

Andy stares at Beth, her expression inscrutable.

"What?" Beth shakes a couple of Advil into her hand.

"I don't know." She looks away and rubs the back of her neck.

Beth swallows the pills dry. "So, how do you know Mick?"

Andy looks up, "I was called to help him."

"Called?" Beth sets the bottle back on the coffee table.

"I hear calls for help in my head. Like you." Andy shrugs.

"Oh. Wow. That's craz…scratch that. I guess it makes sense…with everything else." Beth leans back into the chair. "How long have you known him?"

Andy smiles slowly, "A little over a week."

"What!?" Beth squeaks. _So how does she know he's safe? He's a vampire! Oh, God!_

"Easy. I trust him." Andy reaches for the water on the table.

"Why? How could you know if he's…?" Beth feels her breath catch in her chest.

"I can't _know._ I can only look at what he says and does and judge him from there. It's all any of us can do…with anyone." Andy takes a sip of water and eyes her over the rim of the glass.

Beth meets her gaze. _Oh. Like me. Huh._ "What should I do?"

Andy raises an eyebrow, "That's up to you."

"Of course you would say that." Beth stands.

Andy draws back.

"I'm just getting a drink. I think the Advil stuck in my throat." Beth walks to the kitchen. "I think I need to get some sleep soon. Is the couch going to be okay for you?"

"I'll just go." Andy starts to stand but her knees buckle and she collapses back onto the sofa with a whine in the back of her throat.

"Hey, are you okay?" Beth starts towards her.

"No. Not really." Andy whispers, holding her head.

"What do you need?" Beth kneels next to her.

Andy grimaces, "There isn't anything you can do. I tore the hell out of the inside of my head killing that demon. It's like a bad burn, just on the inside."

"Oh God. Will it get better?" Beth reaches out to touch Andy, but stops, remembering what happened in the parking garage.

"Eventually. But right now I'm worried about my…" She glances briefly at Beth, "husband."

Beth blinks, "Oh. Does he know?"

Andy closes her eyes and whispers, "No."

Beth lifts both eyebrows at her. _How could anyone keep a secret like this from anyone that close?_ "Would calling him help?"

"I don't know how I'd explain not being home when my car is still in the garage." Andy opens eyes filled with desperation. "Normally I just bend time when I teleport to get back when I left. That's how I've hidden my…absences…in the past. But there are limits. I've never tried to jump back more than a few hours before. I don't know if I can. It may be days before I can even try."

_This is bad._ Beth thinks furiously. "So would calling him make it worse or better? Could you still try to… jump back, and make it so that he never got the call if you actually make it?"

"I don't know. I've never tried. I'm pretty sure that I won't be able to jump back that far, anyway. Jumping a few hours feels like running a marathon in four seconds…I don't want to find out what a day would feel like." Andy clenches her jaw in obvious frustration.

Beth bites her lip. "How about just calling and telling him that you are okay but can't explain what's going on yet?"

Andy rubs her forehead. "Why did I leave without waking him at six in the morning and without taking my car?"

Beth frowns, "Maybe a friend picked you up…it was an emergency?"

"Right. Crap. I don't think I have a choice. Can I borrow your phone?" Andy sighs.

Beth stands and goes to get her phone from the kitchen counter. She holds it out to Andy.

Andy takes the phone with an apprehensive expression. She stares at it for several minutes, then swallows and quickly taps out a number. She puts the phone to her ear, and as she closes her eyes tears slide down her cheeks, "Hi, Mark. It's me, Andy. No, I'm okay."

_Cue episode three._


End file.
